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LOIS CAIRNS JOHN KIRK-ANDERSON/Fairfax NZ

HEAVY HEART: David Beaumont and his wife Jeanette lost their son Matt in the CTV building collapse.

David Beaumont recalls with a fond smile and a disbelieving shake of the head the last time that he saw his only son, Matt, alive.

It was Sunday, February 20, 2011, and he was on the computer in his study when Matt bounded through the front door, a newly grown goatee on his face and his arms laden with fresh produce from his vege patch. He was on the run and couldn’t stop long. He just wanted to drop off the vegetables and say a quick hi to his mum and dad.

There was nothing to distinguish the visit from the hundreds of other times he had popped in to see his parents. But it was to be the last visit Matt ever made to them, because two days later he went to work and never came home.

A 31-year-old programme scheduler for Canterbury Television, Matt was one of 115 people killed when the CTV building collapsed during last February’s devastating 6.3 magnitude earthquake. It took nearly 100 days for his remains to be identified.

Nearly a year on his parents, David and Jeanette, are still struggling with their grief.

“What do I miss most about Matt? I can sum it up with one word – everything,” David says, his voice cracking and his eyes welling with tears. “I miss his laughter, his smile, his kindness. He always had time for us. On his odd day off we’d get together and go off and play pool. I miss that. I miss our time together. I miss him so much.”

When the quake struck, David and Jeanette were at their home in Opawa. Family from the United States were visiting and were out sightseeing, so it was them they were most worried about initially. With power out they couldn’t see the devastating footage of the quake-ravaged central city that was being beamed live to other parts of New Zealand so they were unaware the building their son worked in had collapsed.

“We were a bit concerned because we hadn’t heard from him but we just assumed he had left his cellphone on his desk or something,” Jeanette says.

When they finally heard about the building’s collapse it was from a close friend of Matt’s who called in to deliver the news. Even then, Jeanette says, they failed to comprehend the scale of the tragedy and clung on to hope that Matt would be found alive.

Before leaving to spend the night with relatives at Ladbrooks, just west of Christchurch, who had power and water, they pinned a big note to their door with their contact details in case police turned up with news of their son.

“It wasn’t until 9.30pm that night when we got out to my niece’s and saw the pictures on the telly that we realised nothing much is going to come out of there,” says Jeanette.

“Up until then we had hope,” adds David.

The following day the couple spent hours waiting anxiously at Christchurch Hospital for any news of their son.

Radio reports that 15 people had been pulled from an undamaged pocket of the building briefly raised their hopes that Matt could still be alive but those reports turned out to be false and at about 5pm that day they were told there was no hope of finding any further survivors.

Another 98 days passed before the Beaumonts received the news that Matt’s remains had been identified. It was an agonising time. Unable to face the memories their home held, they stayed for weeks with relatives and became regulars at police briefings organised for victims’ families.

The bonds formed during those painful weeks – both with other grieving families and with the police, especially Inspector Mark Harrison, the officer in charge of the family liaison unit – have helped the couple keep their sanity, says David.

“We couldn’t have got through this without all the tremendous support we’ve had from our family, from the police and from complete strangers. People have been marvellous.

“Every day is tough and you get through by taking one day at a time. We’re lucky though because we’ve got so many good memories.”

David and Jeanette adopted Matt when he was just 10 days old.

Unable to have children of their own, they had been on the adoption waiting list for about a year and were beginning to despair of ever becoming parents when they got a call from their social worker to say there was a baby on the West Coast who needed a home.

“Over we went and as soon as we saw him we knew straight away that was our boy,” says David. “He was a delightful boy.”

“A real joy,” adds Jeanette. “He had a lovely nature right from the word go. And he never lost it.”

Growing up, sports weren’t really Matt’s thing; he played cricket for a while but would sit down in the middle of the field when he got bored. He tried his hand at tennis and showed talent but wasn’t interested.

His gregarious nature and keen sense of humour meant that he had a natural talent for entertaining people, and he starred in several school productions. When, near the end of his secondary education at Linwood High School, it was suggested he could have a career in television, Matt took the idea and ran with it, enrolling in a six-month television production course in Nelson. He came back to Christchurch afterwards and worked on a voluntary basis for CTV before taking on a fulltime job with the fledgling station where he split his time between presenting and behind-the-scenes production work. It was a job he loved.

“They said he could do this show, Matty B’s Kids Clubhouse, and he did this little cooking programme on it,” recalls Jeanette. “All my kitchen utensils used to disappear. We would watch him on telly and I’d go ‘there’s my grater’ and there’s whatever else had disappeared. Some of the stuff would come home, some wouldn’t.”

His parents’ pride in their son is obvious. Photos of Matt line the walls of their home and everywhere there are reminders of the love and joy he brought.

“He was my best buddy,” says Jeanette.

“He was a very gentle boy and he didn’t like to offend anybody. He didn’t want to say unkind words.

“There’s a bit of a rumour in the house that I snore and when Matt was living at home David went in one night and said to him ‘come and listen to your mother’. I said to him the next morning, ‘It wasn’t that bad was it – he exaggerates doesn’t he?’ He said `oh mum, I couldn’t believe someone so beautiful could make such a horrible noise’.”

In the nearly 12 months that have passed since Matt died, David and Jeanette have not only had to cope with the pain of their first Christmas without Matt, but also the pain of what should have been his wedding day.

They keep in close contact with his fiancee, Kelly Thorndycroft, but she finds it too painful to visit their home and David finds it too hard to visit the Avonside house she shared with Matt.

The constant aftershocks are also a frightening reminder of the tragedy that shattered their tight-knit family.

“I don’t mind them too much,” says David. “The way I see it is that these bloody quakes have done their worst to me and I won’t let them run my life, but unfortunately Jeanette sees it differently, and the slightest tremor puts her really on edge.”

The couple have been watching closely the proceedings of the royal commission of inquiry into the Canterbury earthquakes and plan to attend the hearings later this year into the collapse of the CTV building.

David says he doesn’t blame anyone for his son’s death, but believes the system used to assess building safety is inadequate and that more should have been done to inform people after the September 4 quake of the risks some buildings posed.

“We put signs up saying take this bend at 70 kilometres. We put signs up saying don’t swim in the river because there is sewage there.

“I believe there is a moral obligation to say look, these buildings are dangerous. If you want to work there then you need to know that these are buildings that could be at risk if we get a further earthquake.

“I know by saying that they [the Christchurch City Council] could have got into legal problems and it could have led to quite a bit of closing down of the central business district, but on February 22 we closed the district down anyway. I do feel that whilst a lot of people would have still been killed, there might have been one or two lives that could have been spared.”

Whatever the outcome of the commission it won’t bring closure to the Beaumonts. And they don’t seek it. Their son will forever be a part of their lives.

– © Fairfax NZ News